June 16th, 2010

Jennifer Carr, Fine Art Consultant at Gallery MAR, will be contributing to our Park City blog this spring, with her Italian Insights and Adventures. This week’s adventure brought Jennifer through the volcano cloud to Paris, France, where she begins her three month trip. Look for more updates and inspirations from her travels throughout Italy and beyond.


We arrived in Rome on a rainy afternoon. Our plan was to see the Coliseum and the ruins but (with the rain) that was not going to happen. We stopped for an espresso to get warm and to figure out our next option. We looked up, and saw the sign for Monet’s exhibit at the Museo del Vittorian.

This answered what our next move would be… it ended up being  a wonderful exhibit including Corot, Monet, Sisley and Pissarro showing more of Monet’s water lilies, but also some of his work outside of his garden. The theme brought the impressionist artists together, with 150 pieces of artwork, all linked by the “representation of nature” from 1870s. This was a wonderful ending to a rainy afternoon.

A few day later the Borghese park was the plan for the day. We went to the Borghese Gallery in the morning, then we were heading to The National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art. This museum had been highly recommended by a local woman we had met at dinner a few days before. She told us we couldn’t miss this museum, and recommended we stoll through the park afterward.

Now to preface the Borghese visit, I had been told by a Gallery MAR client before my trip began that if I didn’t see the Borghese Gallery then I had “missed Rome,” so my expectations were very high. After my visit I would have to agree. Not only do they house some of the great pieces by Caravaggio and Raphael but the exhibit “The Passage (a commissioned art work’s story)” which was incredibly insightful and worth seeing.

What had the biggest impact on me was the Museum of Modern Art. You start on the outer circle of the museum, which is surrounded by a garden, putting you in a very serene vibe. You see sculptures by Canova, paintings by Van Gogh, and as you circle into the middle you begin to see the modern and contemporary art. They truly captured the 19th and 20th century with such a wide variety of works of art.

We continued to take on Rome one day at time. After spending the day in Vatican City enjoying the Basilica (I loved the Pieta, Michelangelo) and the Sistine Chapel, a day roaming through the middle of the city to see Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps and the Pantheon, we eventually made it back to the Coliseum and the ruins.

Rome has so much to offer and it was wonderful to have a good amount of time to really see it, experience it, and stumble onto a few highlights as well. Next on the list is Cinque Terre…

Ciao!